Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Most Decisive Moment in Rock History - 50 Years Down the Crossroads

If ever there was a moment in time when music was at a
crossroads, it was 28 August 1965, 50 years ago, when Bob Dylan “went electric,” what
Time Magazine called “the most decisive moment in rock history,” and things
still haven’t been the same.

The myths and legends that have been spun around Dylan
meeting Levon and the Hawks, the whole electric thing, the Basement Tapes,
Woodstock, the Band, the Last Waltz and the trials and tribulations are now all
part of our cultural history.

Sometimes the myths are written in stone, even though
they only contain some semblance of the truth, such as the historical marker in
Toronto, Canada that marks the location of where Friar’s Tavern once stood, and
officially propagates the fact that this was the spot where on Thursday,
September 16, 1965, Bob Dylan met and first played with Levon and the Hawks,
who would become The Band.

Jana Shea, at Newsworks, writes: “It was 50 years ago
(yes, ‘your road is rapidly agin’….’) that Dylan, who had rose to fame as a
folk music singer-songwriter, plugged in and released ‘Bringing It All Back
Home.” After playing the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with (gasp! Boo!) an electrified
sound, he went in search of a back-up band for his next tour. Legend has it
that Dylan discovered the group that would become The Band…in Somers Point
during one of their regular summer gigs at Tony Marts nightclub. Whether the
connection occurred at the Jersey Shore (as festival organizers boast) or
earlier at Friar’s Tavern in Toronto, Canada (per nearly everyone else), the
result was Bob Dylan and The Band hit the road together and forever changed
rock music.”

Toronto reporter and historian John Goddard makes the
case for Dylan meeting the Hawks in Toronto, where they were from and did play
often, and maybe did practice with Dylan in September 1965 before embarking on
their “world tour,” but despite the historical marker and protests from Goddard
and Shea, Dylan did not meet the Hawks for the first time in Toronto on September
16, 1965.

How can that be true if two of the Hawks – drummer Levon
Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson performed with Dylan at Forest Hills, New
York on August 28, 1965, as they most certainly did in the concert that is pointed
to as “the most decisive moment in rock history.”

Then one of Dylan’s numerous biographers, poo poos the
idea that Dylan called Levon and the Hawks at Tony Marts in Somers Point, NJ
and asked them to join him without having seen or played with them before,
which is exactly what Levon Helm told me and recounts in his autobiography “This
Wheels On Fire.”

Who are we to believe – an unauthorized biographer
writing without the cooperation of those who he is writing about? Or Levon
Helm, one of the principle characters in the story?

And it is a certified fact that Levon and the Hawks were
playing on a nightly basis from late June until mid-August 1965 as the house
band at Tony Marts in Somers Point and were booked and contracted to play three
sets a night until Labor Day, but were let out of their contract in order to play with Dylan at Forest Hills.

The myths that have grown up around
Dylan and the Hawks are legendary, but the real truth is a matter of public
record – and part of the story that I try to recount in the serialized blog The
Summer of ’65 Revisited [that is being posted at http://summerof1965.blogspot.com], which
details the Hawks at the Point and the most accurate account of how Dylan came
to meet them.

After writing and recording “Like a
Rolling Stone,” Dylan wanted a rock band to play with and his manager Albert
Grossman’s Secretary Mary Martin, from Toronto, recommended the Hawks, as did
John Hammond, Jr., who had previously met the Hawks on the road and in Toronto.
Grossman tracked down the Hawks at Tony Marts through their Canadian booking
agent Colonel Harold Kutlets, and Dylan called them there and talked on the
phone with Levon Helm, who didn’t know who Dylan was. Then Levon, Robertson and
maybe Garth Hudson drove to New York City and met Dylan for the first time at
Grossman’s office.

After playing Tony Marts for the last time, Levon Helm and
Robbie Robertson played with Dylan at the famous concert at Forest Hills, NY,
and then the rest of the Hawks backed Dylan on his tour that included Austin,
Texas and the UK.

My continuing serial blog “The Summer of 1965 Revisited” [ http://summerof1965.blogspot.com ] also recalls
the conversion of Conway Twitty, who also played Tony Marts that summer, and
successfully converted from a rock and roll star to country music, another
pertinent change in direction that altered the history of music in America.

Conway Twitty’s official web site
biography says: “After eight years of playing sock hops and dance clubs, Twitty
heard the ticking of an internal clock that seemed to guide all the major
decisions in his life. One night on a stage in Summer's Point, New Jersey,
Twitty looked out at a room full of people he didn't know. With a wife and
three kids at home, he realized his days of providing background music for
sweaty teens were over. Twitty put down his guitar, walked off the stage and
embarked on one of the greatest country careers in history. Signed by legendary
producer Owen Bradley to MCA/Decca in 1965, Twitty released several singles
before 1968's "Next In Line" became his first country No. 1. And thus
began a run unmatched in music history. Twitty reeled off 50 consecutive No. 1
hits.”

Most myths and legends are passed on
by vocal tradition and you can tell that this version of Conway Twitty’s career
that talks about “Summer’s Point,” spells Somers Point the way someone who
hears it, and probably heard it from the horse’s mouth – Conway Twitty himself.

As for how Bob Dylan met the Hawks, some of the participants are still alive - Dylan, John Hammond, Jr., Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson are all alive and Mary Martin should be, so maybe someone should ask them how it all went down.

In the meantime, to commemorate the union of Dylan and the Hawks - Jeff Schwachter and friends are putting on a Dylan Fest show this Friday, August 28 (7:30pm) at the Dante Theater - 14 N. Mississippi Avenue, in Atlantic City, the marvelous music hall now owned by Stockton University, presenting a concert of the songs that Dylan and the Hawks performed at that time as well as some of the songs that made Tony Marts nightclub one of the most famous clubs on the East Coast.

DYLAN
FEST is a musical tribute to Bob Dylan (and Levon & the Hawks) on
the 50th anniversary of Dylan releasing the groundbreaking record “Like a
Rolling Stone,” a pair of classic albums and, most importantly, “going
electric,” which has fascinating and historic connections to the
Atlantic City area. Mirroring the Dylan/Hawks shows of 50 years ago,
this show features the acoustic stylings of Philadelphia native
singer/songwriter Peter Stone Brown, rounded out by a plugged in,
electrified salute by the region’s best Dylan tribute band, the 5
Believers!

This
event pays homage on the 50th anniversary of Dylan “going electric” and
mystifying audiences with the first electric/acoustic folk-rock show of
its kind. In 1965, Dylan chose members of Levon & the Hawks
(featuring the late Levon Helm, and which would later become The Band)
after discovering them during their summer-long residency just 15
minutes outside of AC in a Somers Point, NJ nightclub called Tony
Mart’s.

Dylan
would eventually recruit the entire Hawks group for his game-changing
and historic world tour (in late 1965-1966), as documented in the PBS
Martin Scorsese-directed documentary No Direction Home and the official Columbia Records Bootleg Series releases.

South Jersey resident Jeff Schwachter has been studying, performing, painting — and writing about — the music
of Bob Dylan for more than a quarter century. In recent years, his band
5 Believers has begun paying tribute to Dylan with several special and
well-received shows and events in the Atlantic City/Philadelphia area.
Schwachter, former editor of Atlantic City Weekly, also wrote the
nationally award-winning piece “Somers Point ’65,” which tells the
inside story of how Dylan wound up finding his electric band at the
Jersey Shore and ultimately changing the course of modern rock forever
and helping the Hawks become The Band.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Few events in the half-century history
of rock & roll are considered more significant than when Bob
Dylan plugged in his guitar, went electric and began playing with the
Hawks.

How Dylan came to meet the Hawks has
been a matter of much scrutiny and uncertainty, and there has been a
lot of myth making around the legends as they grew over the years.

The most popular accounts have Dylan
discovering the Hawks while on vacation in Atlantic City, or some
variation of that, but after much diligent research this is the most
likely account of what really happened.

By the end of June '65, Dylan's song
“Mr. Tambourine Man,” as recorded by the Byrds, was Number One on
the pop charts and one of the songs that the hippies at Shriver's
Pavilion on the Ocean City Boardwalk would play on their guitars and sing, with someone playing a
bongo drum and inevitably a tambourine would chime in.

The Byrds were a new California band
who took the song, as it was written by Bob Dylan, and gave it a
rocky twist, and make the song the first and the only song Dylan
would write to make it Number One on the popular music charts.

Dylan wrote the song the previous
winter of 1964 during a cross country road trip he made with some
buddies. He was already the epitome of all things folk, pretege of Woody Gunthrie, leader of political protests, playing with Joan Baez
at the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I
Have A Dream” speech, and was the darling of the folk crowd and the
“conscience of his generation.”

But Dylan had recently been booed by a
liberal white audience when he accepted the Tom Paine Award and gave
a drunken, rambling speech in which he showed sympathy for President
Kennedy's assassin. With a new album in the can, a small college tour
to back it, his relationship with girlfriend on the rocks, it was
time to get out of Dodge.- “Get while the getten's good,” as
someone in his crowd said, making Dylan stop to think if there's a
song in that cleche.

On the cross country, coast to coast
road trip from New York City to San Fran, they stopped at every
record shop on the way – in Newark, Philadelphia, Wilmington and
Washington D.C,. to buy every copy of his new record they could get
their hands on, one of which was given to Carl Sanberg, who they
dropped in to visit unexpectedly, and found the old man at home on
his farm and a bit perplexed by this young man knocking on his door
and handing him a record. Sandberg just didn't get it, but was polite
about not acknowledging it.

The itinerary of this road trip
included stopping to sing for some Freedom Riders, who were northern
white liberal college kids trying to convince black people in the
South to register and vote, some of whom were being killed by the
local red necks.

Then it was on to New Orleans, where
they visited some clubs in the French Quarter and found a young
hippie singing Dylan's songs. Then they stopped at Dealey Plasa in
Dallas where President Kennedy was killed before moving on to Vegas
and San Francisco.

Well it was sometime during that road
trip that Dylan wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a song he said was
about Bruce Langhorne, a folk music session percussionist who had a
large Turkish drum that was lined with bells that sounded like a
tambourine, an instrument Langhorne said he bought in a Village pawn
shop.

Dylan recorded the song in a Hollywood
studio while he was in California, and a demo copy of the first
recording of the song was shared with the Byrd's manager, who
convinced them to record it as one of the first of the songs they
would do in what was to become known as new genera of music they
called soft-rock, and they did it complete with drums, guitars and
all kinds of new electronic gimics they were coming up with. The “Mr.
Tambourine Man” recording session actually included only two
members of the Byrds, formerly The Jet Setters, including David
Crosby, and studio session men who would become known as The Wrecking
Crew.

The Byrd's version of “Mr. Tambourine
Man” was released first, and hit the pop charts like a bullet, and
it quickly got Dylan's attention, in fact it blew him away, not only
because of the sound, but the fact that a lot of people liked it –
it helped bring folk music into the popular mainstream, and made
everybody a lot of money.

Back in New York City, Dylan retreated
to his Village apartment and was inspired to write not just another
song, but another song that would change music as we know it, society
as it was and the world in ways that are not yet done.

When Dylan finished writing the last
lyrics and notes to “Like A Rolling Stone” he knew he had a hot
hit on his hands, and made a quick mono tape recording of it, and
then took the tape and his guitar Uptown to the office of his manager
Albert Grossman. Grossman was busy with another client, John Hammond,
Jr., but Dylan and Hammond were friends too. Hammond's father, John
Hammond, Sr., had signed Dylan to Columbia Records, as he had
previously signed Billie Holiday and would someday sign the kid from
Asbury Park who had yet to come down the Pike and wasn't yet the
boss.

Dylan excitedly told Grossman and
Hammond that he wrote a new song, and he wanted them to hear it.
Dylan was going to play the tape he had just made but instead he
spread the half typed and some hand scrawled words out on paper on
the coffee table in front of him, picked up the guitar and began to
strum and sing, “Once upon a time, you dressed so fine,......”

Grossman and Hammond had the same
reaction to the song as Dylan himself, they knew it was a hit, but
they also knew the ugly inner workings and blood, sausage and guts of
the entertainment industry and were aware that even the best songs
can fall by the wayside if not done logistically correct, and there
was no particular way to do it, they just had to get all the ducks in
order to make that song a hit.

Then Dylan mentioned the Byrd's version
of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and how neat it sounded with the drums,
guitars, keys and all that reverb shit, and that's how “Like A
Rolling Stone”:had to be produced, not as an acoustic folk song.

And Grossman agreed, and he seldom
agreed with anybody, as he was known to be one of the toughest and
most ostentatious entertainment managers on the planet, at least in
New York City. He even disagreed with the contract Hammond, Sr. had
given Dylan and made him re-write it.

While Hammond, Jr. was a rich white boy
who loved and played really good black blues songs, he got the rock
and roll thing too, and Grossman started going through his massive
Rolodex they began throwing out names of rock and roll bands who
could possibly play “Like A Rolling Stone,” and tour with Dylan
to back the song and the next album that they knew could
revolutionize music as it was known at the time.

“Dion broke with the Belmonts,”
Grossman said dryly, “and we have this new group out of Chicago,
“The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is looking for work,.....” and
Hammond threw out the names of some of the groups he knew might fill
the bill, but then a squeaky, uncertain girls voice spoke up and
interrupted them.

“Excuse me Mr. Grossman but,”
Grossman's secretary hesitated, “but, but I know a really good band
– the Hawks.”

Receptionist-secretary Mary Martin had
been sitting there fielding phone calls while taking it in, and if
they want a rock & roll band, well she really did know a good one
– the Hawks.

Originally from Canada, Martin went to
school in Ontario and caught the Hawks on numerous occasions.

“I saw the Hawks play back home and
they're really the best band I have ever seen or heard, even here in
New York,” Martin said.

“That's a pretty good
endorsement,” Hammond spoke up, “and I'll vouch for them too; I
met the Hawks on the road down south playing with Rockabilly Ronnie
Hawkins, a real rout y road bunch, but solid musicians.

Grossman looked at Dylan, and Dylan
looked at Mary Martin and John Hammond, Jr. and asked, “Where can
we find the Hawks?”

“Put in a call to Colonel Kudlets in
Ontario,” Grossman said to Martin, and without having to look in
his Rolodex, barked out the address and phone number from memory –
That's Harold Kudlets, Suite 824 Sheraton-Connauqht Hotel, Hamilton,
Ontario – 522-0900.”

Grossman talked to Kudlets directly,
one on one, mano to mano, they were two of a kind, and dealt on an
equal basis even though Grossman was much higher on the entertainment
totem pole since he was in Manhattan, the center of entertainment
power, and Kudlets was in Ontario, a third world market in the
entertainment universe.

Few words were exchanged, and when
Grossman put down the phone he said, “The Hawks are playing a
nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey called Tony Marts, and their
booked until Labor Day, and Kudlets said the contract is good but
they can be bought out of it if the money was there.

It's at this point in the proceedings
where things get a little foggy, as some accounts suggest that Dylan,
with Hammond, Jr. immediately drove down the Garden State Parkway to
Somers Point (Exit 30) to check out the Hawks at Tony Marts.

If they did they didn't call ahead or
announce the fact, and at the door paid the $2 cover to Sonny
McCullough, the guy behind the cash register at the door who took the
tickets and cover charge, they got a beer from Dick Squires at the
Triangle Bar, or Dooby at the Round Bar, and stood back against the
wall and just took the whole scene in, giving the Hawks close
scrutiny.

If Dylan did come to Somers Point he
didn't say hello to the Hawks or Tony Marotta, or tell anybody who he
was, and he wasn't recognized, but its entirely likely that he did
check out a performance by the Hawks before he tended them an offer,
which he did one afternoon over the phone.

Now back to more solid historical
footing, as recounted by Levon, one day while they were rehearsing or
sitting around their dressing room on the second floor of Tony Marts,
they got a phone call, probably to the pay phone in the hall, and
Levon took the call.

Dylan identified himself and asked
Levon if he and the Hawks wanted to play with him at Carnegie Hall.

Levon was perplexed, he held the phone
away from him and told the other guys sitting around that it was Bob
Dylan.

“Whose Bob Dylan?” Levon asked, and
Richard leaned over and whispered in his ear, “wrote Mr. Tambourine Man,”
and Levon nodded and went back on the line and asked, “Who else is on the
bill?” he asked.

“Just us,” Dylan replied, as Levon
incredulously considered them selling out Carnegie Hall as something
that just wasn't possible.

But Dylan was serious, and talked Levon
into coming to New York City to see him, and the following Monday
while the Hangover League played ball, Levon, Robbie Robertson and
Garth Hudson drove up to New York City, possibly with Conway Twitty,
who had business in New York at the same time.

While Twitty was signing a new record
contract with a Country Music Lable, the three Hawks visited Dylan at
Grossman's office where they introduced themselves to Mary Martin,
the receptionist, who in turn introduced them to Dylan, sitting on
the couch in the adjacent lounge.

When Grossman came out of his office,
they all sat down around a reel to reel tape recorder and when they
were ready he turned it on and played the studio recording of “Like
A Rolling Stone,” that Dylan had made a few days earlier, mainly
with the Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper and some studio guys who
just happened to be there at the time.

Levon, Robbie and Garth listened, and
at the end of the song, they all sat back speechless for a few
seconds, until Dylan spoke up enthusiastically, “Do you want to
play that?” he asked.

That they did, but there was a problem,
you see, they were under contract to play at Tony Marts until Labor
Day, but Dylan said he needed them, and needed them Now, as he was
booked to play Forest Hills, a tennis area being used for folk shows,
on August 28, a little over a week away.

Impossible, they said, as Tony Marotta
was a tough nut, and they liked him like a father and couldn't
and wouldn't break the contract with him.

Grossman spoke up for the first time
saying, “We'll double what they're paying you for the week and
we'll contract you for the year, and pay you even if you don't play.”

Levon looked at Robbie who looked
at Garth and they all were just dumbfounded.

“Well, we'll see what we can do about
the Tony Marts gig and get back to you soon Mr. Dylan,” Levon said
shaking his hand, as Robertson and Garth got up without saying anything and they all left
wondering what was going to happened now.

The ride back down the Parkway was a
quiet one, they kept the radio off and just though about what was
going down, what could go down, and what would go down, and all of
the various possibilities.

Going with Dylan, someone spoke up
along the ride, was not like backing Ronnie Hawkins, as Hawkins was
stuck in the rut off the old Chitlin' Circuit, while Dylan was on his
way up, playing arenas, not nightclubs and roadhouses, and his song
was Number One on the pop charts at that moment, and they just heard
a new song that was going to go somewhere, and they just felt they
had to be a part of that trip, where ever it went, and go along for the ride.

But how would they explain that to
Rick and Richard and most of all Mr. Mart, Anthony Marotta, who had
taken them off the road, given them a steady job and made them feel
at home?

They couldn't and wouldn't screw
him no matter what.

When they got back to Bay Avenue Somers
Point they asked for Rick and Richard and Wordman,
cleaning up the joint, told them that they were across the street at Coach's
Corner, a little out door grill where they often ate and hung out
during the day.

After talking with Rick and Richard,
Levon went back to Tony Marts, and walked through the front door as he did the
first day he arrived, went through the dark club, now just getting ready
to open, and out the back door, past the canyon of beer cases and
kegs and knocked on Tony's office door.

Sitting across from Tony in his office
was a bit unnerving, especially given what Levon was about to tell
Tony, and he got what he expected.

Tony got up from his chair saying, “You
want to leave me before the BIGGEST weekend of the SUMMER!, You Bums,” and
Levon shifted back in his chair, as Tony's voice shifted and went
from deep, dark and husky to a softer tone, and the acknowledgment
that, “but it's a good opportunity for you boys." The Hawks had been good to
him, so Tony sat down again and picked up the phone and said, “If
Colonel Kudlets has a band that can fill your shoes for Labor Day
weekend you can walk, you can go dance with Bob Dylan or anybody, but Kudlets has
to come through.”

And Kudlets did come through with a
band that was acceptable to Tony – Mitch Ryder and the Detroit
Wheels, whose hit song, “Devil With The Blue Dress” was on the
charts and making like a bullet.

Then Tony did what he seldom does, he
threw a farewell party for the Hawks, something he had only done once
previously, for Len Carey and the Crackerjacks. Len Carey was a
protege of Spike Jones, and brought his New Orleans schtick to Tony
Marts, complete with beads and crackerjacks, while Spike Jones is
mentioned in “Up on Cripple Creek.”

Since Conway's birthday was coming up
soon, on September 1st, but he too was leaving Tony Marts,
his contract was up the week before Labor Day, so the farewell party
was going to be a double whammy – goodbye, so long, farewell to
both Conway Twitty and the Hawks, and planning a fine Somers Point
send off was in the works.

{This is an episode of The Long Cool
Summer of '65 Revisited – Act II – A Work In Progress)

One of the unsung heros of
rockabilly is Harold Kudlets as without him this vibrant form of
music would have had a much tougher time getting established
north of the American border. It is open to speculation but the
career of quite a few of those who we regard to today as
originators may well have taken a different course without the
business courage and backing of Harold. One wonders if Conway
Twitty would have written "It's Only Make Believe". But
of course this is academic as it did happen and here's the story
of how and why.

Glasgow-born Kudlets has lived in
Hamilton, Ontario, since he was eight and schooldays bring back
memories of the old Cannon and Hess Street School and Westdale
Collegiate. Then came a number of jobs, mostly in his own, in the
promotion business. In fact, the only time he has worked for
anyone else was after Second World War when he went to Stelco for
a spell, a job about which he commented:

'

-I think I was more a hindrance
there then a help.

Steloc was otherwise known as The
Steel Company of Canada and was one of the nartion's major
employers. However like allsteel manufactuers the world over, it
has now contracted in size.

Anyway, he got his start in 1946 as
a manager of the Forum, the old Hamilton, Ontario ice palace on
Barton Street between Sanford Avenue and Wentworth Street when it
was a summer rolling rink. The Forum had an audience capacity of
between 3,500 and 4,000 but was demolished in the mid seventies.

In July 1947 Harold booked the
original Glenn Miller Orchestra with Tex Beneke. Kudlets also had
his own act, a colored piano team known as "Mr. And Mrs.
88". That was the time when the issuing of liquor licenses
to restaurants heralded the start of the bar industry:

-I think The Grange on King Street
West was our first. You could only buy a drink if you ordered a
meal. Beers cost 75 cents and an all-you-could-eat smorgasbord
cost you 99 cents.

Kudlets went on to book acts like
Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Jack Teagarden, Bobby
Hackett and The Jack Benny Show in places like the Flamingo
Lounge, the Golden Bell, the Armouries and the Forum.

-I remember when Louis Armstrong
opened the Dundas Arena for me in May 1951. I though I was going
to be a good promoter, and limit the crowd to about 3,500. Of
course, by 8 oíclock, the tickets were all sold out, and there
were thousands of people outside. Well, hell, they got in anyway.

Dundas was atown near Hamilton and
had a population in excess of 20,000 people.

Harold Kudlets was the man to find
work for starving musicians, he had them working for 40 to 50
weeks a year. Over 125 musicians have cause to be grateful to
Harold. When interviewed in 1965 he said:

-There ís only a handful of agents
who are honourable in this business. The business is built on
honesty. A crook may gain some profit in the short run, but an
honest man will make more profit for himself and others in the
long run.

In the late 1950s Kudlets got the
chance to book Conway Twitty (aka Harold Jenkins) a southern boy
who patterned his tyle after Elvis Presley. Twitty wrote his song
"It's Only Make Believe" at the long-gone Flamingo
Lounge in downtown Hamilton, although some other sources have the
location as Fischer Hotel in the same town. Conway was so
impressed that he painted a picture of Canada as the promised
land to another Arkansas rockabilly wildman, Ronnie Hawkins:

-Conway was booked into a hotel in
Washington and after the third day, the club threw him out. He
was not right for the room. Don Seat asked if I could keep Conway
working for a few weeks until they got the contract sorted out.
He stayed with me for two years and never had a day off.

-He never counted the money he
made. Heíd just point to the pile and said: "Take your
share". To be honest, I donít know whether to could or not

-Conway's group was entirely
different to that of Levon (Helms) and The Hawks. Conway's group
were all typical country boys. They were gentlemen all the way,
particularly with women. Whereas Levon and his boys just give
them a party.

Kudlets first brought Ronnie
Hawkins & The Hawks to Canada via Hamilton. Hawkins made the
pilgrimage to Canada with his backup band the Hawks to the Golden
Rail Tavern in 1958 and found a new home. In return, Hawkins and
his Hawks nicknamed Kudlets The Colonel.

But there is one accomplishment of
which Kudlets is more proud and this is his help in establishing
Levon And The Hawks.. This is course the legenday Canadian outfit
although initailly fronted by Levon Helm from Arkanas, who went
from backing Ronnie Hawkins to backing Bob Dylan and then onto
ensconcing themselves as one of the premier rock groups known as
The Band.

-Says Kudlets at his Robinson
Avenue bungalow: I was the one who started them, and I was the
one who was there when it ended for a while.

Harold ws the guy who Levon Helm
and Rick Danko approached when they became disenchanted with
Hawkins:

-I had my office those days at the
Royal Connaught Hotel. One day, Levon and the boys were sitting
in the lobby waiting for me at 9 o'clock in the morning. And I
thought, what gives? These guys did not usually go to bed until 9
a.m. in the morning.

During the course of their meeting,
Kudlets agreed to take on Levon And The Hawks as a client. About
a year later, he booked them for a New Jersey gig and someone
from Bob Dylan's office heard them. Dylan gave Helm a call and
hired the group as his backing band as he moved from acoustic to
electric music.

In his heyday as a booking agent he
had his office on the eighth floor of the Royal Connaught Hotel
in downtown Hamilton. Behind the door bearing the lettering
"Harold Kudlets Agency" was a room stacked with piles
of promotion material, newspaper clippings and a desk full of
contracts. This was the heart and nerve centre of Kudlets
business empire. In the office were photos of the stars of the
day along with busts of Chopin and Beethoveen. He was constantly
on the look out for new acts with the end result that he had
several that were the equal to any others on the Canadian
entertainment scene. Among them were Ray Smith & His Rockin'
Little Angels (ex-Sun/Judd artist) and Matt Lucas, both from the
mid south of the USA.

In the mid sixties, Kudlet had a
ready market for Canadian groups in the USA but getting them
there was another thing. This was a source of constant irritation
to him. Despite this,the majority of his acts in the sixties were
Canadian, a fact about which he was and ishe was very proud:

-We can get an American group over
here at almost ten minutesí notice. Canadian immigration bends
over backwards to help. But it takes from three to ten weeks to
get a Canadian group into the US. There are mountains of red
tape.

Any group than can make it in
Canada can make it anywhere. Stateside, most of the clubs have
dancing and audiences only want to hear the beat. But here, here,
there is very little dancing. Entertainment is the thing. As a
result, the groups have to work very hard. They have to
entertain.

Kudlets later had his business
tentacles stretching throughout the United States and he became
the booker for the Freemont Hotel in Las Vegas, the Golden Club
in Reno, the Trophy Room in Sacramento, the A-Go-Go Room in
Seattle and the chain of Peppermint Lounges in cities such as New
York, San Francisco, Miami and Honolulu. He said the key to being
a successful agent was putting the right group in the right room.

These New York agents, they could
not care less. If the room called for classical music, they would
send a rock band. Finally, the owners got so burned that when an
agent came along whom they could trust, they would stick with
him.

At one time, I was the one of the
largest independent agents world wide. I am very proud of that.
And about 95 per cent of the acts I booked were Canadian. It was
a feather in my cap of being a little Canadian agent, and being
with the big boys.

When disco became the rage in the
mid-sevties, Kudlets found his livelihood diminishing as clubs
looked for dick jockeys instead of musicians ans o went into a
period of semi hibernation. However he came back into business in
1983 to help book the reformed Band, but retired again when his
wife Pauline fell ill. Sadly, she passed away in April 1994.

Today, Harold wistfully says:

I am old enough to collect my
pension - but if I had the opportunity to go back to the
entertainment scene, I would jump at it. To leave the business
cold, you just cannot do it.

If that is not possible, perhaps
Harold will set about writing his memoirs, it will be a
fascinating tale that is for sure. For now, thanks are due to
Harold for his share in the founding of the music we all know and
love, rock 'n' roll.

dik.de.heer@hetnet.nl(Supplied to TIMS by Tony Wilkinson)

These pages were saved from "This
Is My Story" for reference usage only. Please note that these
pages were not originally published or written by
BlackCat Rockabilly Europe.

In music management folklore of the
‘50s and ‘60s, Colonel Tom Parker managed Elvis Presley. Brian
Epstein managed The Beatles. Pioneer agent and promoter Harold
Kudlets had the wide open musical territory of Southern Ontario,
resulting in the American invasion of rock ‘n’ roll into Canada.

Kudlets was born in Glasgow, Scotland
in 1916. When he was eight, his family moved to Hamilton, Ontario.

In 1946, he started out in the
promotion business, when he became manager of the Forum Palace in
Hamilton.

In 1947, Kudlets booked the Glenn
Miller Orchestra with Ted Beneke as leader. From there on, he signed
major big band and jazz acts like Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton, Duke
Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Bobby Hackett, to name a few.

By the late 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll
was in full bloom. Kudlets, through his Harold Kudlets Agency, booked
singer Conway Twitty at the Flamingo Lounge in downtown Hamilton.
This resulted in great success for both. The song, It’s Only Make
Believe (1958), was composed by Twitty with his drummer Jack Vance
during a short performance break. It was an enormous hit record that
instantly established Twitty as a major recording star.

Twitty was very appreciative of Canada,
so much so that he spread the word about Harold Kudlets to fellow
rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins from Arkansas. With his backup band
The Hawks, Hawkins traveled north to the land of opportunity, guided
by the free hand of Kudlets, who wasted no time in arranging a stint
for them at the Golden Rail at Diamond Jim’s. Shortly after,
Kudlets took Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks to New York and had them
sign a contract with Roulette Records.

Another notable milestone in the career
of Kudlets was when he helped organize and manage Levon (Helm) and
The Hawks (The Stones That I Throw - 1965). The group morphed into
The Band and the famous Music From Big Pink (1968) album, after
having served as backup band for Bob Dylan.

When I recently spoke to Matt Lucas he
said, “I talked to my old friend Harold Kudlets yesterday. He was
the man who brought rock ‘n’ roll to Canada. Yes, he brought all
of us to Canada when there was no rock ‘n’ roll in Canada. He is
still sharp as a tack and turned 97 on November 9th, 2013.”

Lucas quipped, “I’ve got a pretty
good memory also as I remember his office phone number from 55 years
ago, JA 20-900!”

Kudlets, who still lives in Hamilton,
retired in the mid-80s. During a brief phone conversation with him I
sensed a yearning for the past. He now has the accolades and warm
memories of a fantastic career.

-- Andrew Merey is a Whitby resident
who’s interested in music and movie history. He has contributed
articles to This Week since 2003. You can reach him
at amerey@rogers.com .

Many of the big names he represented
are gone, too often before their time. Sadly, that's sometimes the
flip side of tall candles; short wicks and high flames that burn
fast.

But Harold Kudlets, impresario
extraordinaire, is alive and well (as they used to say of Jacques
Brel) and living in Shalom Village, where his cheesecake is
legendary.

At 98, you're going to outlast a lot of
people. Still, Harold wishes people like Conway Twitty (he died at
60) and some of the "boys" he helped bring along — you
know them as The Band — hadn't left quite so soon.

Often with creativity, says Harold,
come oversized energies and money blindness. "The alcohol and
the drugs," says Harold. "They (some of his clients) would
go through money. It's an attitude that the picnic will never end.
Levon Helm (drummer for The Band) would tip five people before he
ever got to his hotel room."

He sometimes had to send airline
tickets to fairly well-known acts because they'd blown through
fortunes.

"Do you like cheesecake?"
Harold asks me, in his handsome apartment with the memorabilia and
the numerous pictures and articles mounted on the wall, chronicling a
career that began in 1947.

That's when he found himself booking
the Glenn Miller band into the old Barton Street roller rink, which
he managed for an owner who "won it in a card game, I think."
(Before that, he'd run a short-lived hamburger joint on the beach
that got eclipsed by another you might have heard of, Hutch's.)

"A couple of gentlemen came in to
the rink one day with these big window cards for the band and told me
the promoter had quit; would I like to take over the contract?"
says Harold. He had no idea then where his answer, yes, would take
him. All over the world.

On the wall there's a picture of Harold
in New York City in the early 1980s with Bob Dylan and Levon Helm. He
either represented or booked everyone from Jack Benny ("great
man, not cheap at all like he made out"), Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington and Harry James, to Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks, Bill
Haley and the Comets, Billie Holiday, Jerry Garcia and The Grateful
Dead (but no, not Jacques Brel).

He booked Frank Sinatra into the Barton
roller rink, but then got served a cease-and-desist order from the
Mutual Street Arena in Toronto, whose contract with Old Blue Eyes
stipulated no one could book him within 10 days, either side, or 50
miles, any direction, of his performance there. Otherwise he could've
added the "Chairman of the Board" to his roster.

"I love cheesecake," I tell
Harold.

"I'll keep a piece for you. I'm
making some for Passover," says Harold, who remembers his mother
finding an apartment in the east end in the 1920s, after they'd
arrived from Glasgow (where he was born); neighbours took up a
petition to keep the Jewish family out.

Times have changed, but Harold
remembers it all.

If he remembers, Harold is in turn
remembered, probably best for representing Conway Twitty and The
Band. He was celebrated in 2006 with lifetime achievement honours at
the Hamilton Music Awards.

"I got a call. A club owner in
Washington cancelled Conway's contract and could I help by booking
him in Hamilton?" Harold remembers.

"I booked him for $375 and it
changed both our lives. He was held over and he ended up living in
Hamilton for a time. It's where he wrote "It's Only Make
Believe," which went on to make millions."

Harold built on that rockabilly
strength with his next act, Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.

"They were such a show group,"
says Harold. "Ronnie did back flips and somersaults and his
camel walk (precursor to Michael Jackson's Moonwalk)."

Harold pulls more yarn from the endless
spool of his memory. I listen, along with Harold's friend, Jim
Kennelly.

"Oh, I had some novelty acts too —
a one-legged tap dancer; Tiny Grimes, who played the piano with his
feet, from a bench high over the keyboard." And, of course,
Chesty Morgan.

Jim shakes his head, smiling. He's
heard so many of the stories, before but there's always something
new.

"You've really gotta try his
cheesecake," says Jim.

jmahoney@thespec.com

905-526-3306

DEO: Legendary promoter Harold Kudlets

The Spec's Jeff Mahoney sits down with
Harold Kudlets, former show promoter for the Royal Connaught

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The Long Cool Summer of '65 Revisited - Bill Kelly's first novel is light summer fiction, set in America's Greatest Family Resort in its most sinful hey days, where Easy Rider meets American Graffiti and collides with A Confederacy of Dunces.

"Awesome read" - Greg Gregory

"Great stuff!" - Publisher Rob Huberman

"Wow, sure brings back memories. Keep them coming. Your painting pictures and tickling memories and making us all feel younger. Thanks, Your summer friend from the summer of '69"
- Marks Connally

"Great, with an outstanding reminisce of the old school of life, from Somers Point all the way down. The entertainment in that era was astounding, the Jersey Shore produced so much talent that it later was recognized as the capitol of music in America. Good job, Bill, once again you have demonstrated what a great journalist/writer you are without a doubt..." - Joe Amato - Baltimore, Md.

Legal Disclaimer

This is a novel work of historical fiction. The events described actually occurred and most of the characters are real, though a few are composites based on people known to the author. Any similarity to any persons living or dead is intentional.

Any name spellings, typos and errata will be corrected by contacting the author at billkelly3@gmail.com

Libel threats and civil suits can be directed to Murphy's Law TomMurphy@murphyslaw.com

Episode 4 – Sunday – The 99
Percenters – “We are the New Barbarians” Arrive – Tido Mambo,
the Hippies and Pete Carroll and Carroll Brothers commit civil
disobedience by playing music on the beach and get arrested.

Episode 5 – Monday – Labor Day –
When OCPD Attempts to Enforce No-Muisc Law a Riot Erupts and All Hell
Breaks Loose.

AFTERMATH – The Day After – Jack
Murray Closes and Locks Bay Shores for the Season.